I'm not a game developer and I don't have my finger on the heartbeat of game development, which is why I'm asking this question, I suppose. I don't understand why someone hasn't built Ultima Online 2. What I mean is, an isometric online game that polishes all the rough corners on the orginal UO by taking the orginal game and expanding it. Update the graphics to Diablo III quality, etc. Ditch the neon hair and elves, for crying out loud. I'm getting so sick of logging into 3D environments that are full of pretty pictures but have absolutely no depth. Modern games are becoming slide-shows where bascially the reward for hard work is fighting a level appropriate monster in a different setting. You cannot interact with anything, heck, in Darkfall you cannot even leave anything on the ground. I just don't get it. I played DaOC for awhile and couldn't believe the armor and the monsters were color coded. When the color of the armor or monster changed it was time to upgrade. What is with that? In UO I saw people being creative. People had so many things to work with that stuff the developers didn't even imagine sprung up. There were things like Rune Libraries and Treasure Hunter Libraries - all player run - where years of research could be shared with a wandering noob. It was delightful. Everything else is just Quake Online as far as depth goes. What am I missing here?

What are you missing? The market. Is the expected revenue from such a project capable of covering the costs of development and marketing, with a small enough amount of risk? "3D environments that are full of pretty pictures but have absolutely no depth" sell. Game development costs money ... and a lot of it.

Visuals always win over gameplay depth*. Most gamers are casual gamers. I know I'm the kind of guy who <3z Nethack, still thinks Wasteland is the best in the Wasteland-Fallout series, and prefers Baldur's Gate II over anything Bioware is pushing out nowadays. That however does not change the fact that I am overwhelmingly in the minority on all counts. Like my friend said (Referring to Wasteland) 'Why the hell are you playing a game from the 80's when the rest of the World has moved on to Fallout III?'. I really couldn't explain it to him, he remembers no other game before 'The Sims 2', and doesn't have 1% of the game collection I have.

It's the same argument with 'new movies' vs 'classic movies'. The trend influences what people think the trend should be. The larger the investment gets (Think of modern game studios vs old), the greater the fear of the investors, and the more the trend is enforced.

I would love to see a more colorful version of wasteland, as long as it has everything I love about wasteland, but I doubt that I'll ever see something similar, or anything above a very cautious half-ass attempt.

I know your original topic was MMOs, but I think what I said about single player games applies to them as well.


* Note that by deep gameplay I don't mean good gameplay, in my mind the latter doesn't need the former, but the former always needs to latter.

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Original post by Meh_Gerbil What am I missing here?

That the depth of a game has nothing to do with its graphical style. An isometric environment isn't any easier/faster to make than a fully 3d one these days. That the games are... let's say 'less interactive' is not related to that. I suspect that if someone took Oblivion and MMO'd it then similar libraries or constructs could develop even though it's the standard 3d environs.


And as an aside...

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Modern games are becoming slide-shows where bascially the reward for hard work is fighting a level appropriate monster in a different setting.

Recreation shouldn't be hard work.

UO nowadays has a niche market, the "people who won't/can't afford a video card that supports shaders" market, nowadays I guess even integrated Intel cards support some hardware acceleration, but some years ago, people just refused to let go of the UO 2D client, in the end, they removed the 3D client to go back to 2D.

What does all this babbling have to do with the thread? Well, there is a dark story behind UO2 as well as a spin off MMO called UX:O, in the end and well into the development cycle of both EA decided or found out that there was a no audience, OU wasn't dying, and no one really wanted a new game, they wanted the same game but better, so that's why no one has built UO2.

Trademarks aside, it seems like there is no market for a better UO, or UO for that matter which is probably the reason no one has built a similar game with better graphics and dynamics, and I say there is no market for UO because the UO of today has been trying to be more like its competitors over the years, which seems to be what the player base wants, its one of the reasons I left it, its weird because the consensus seems to be that it was a much better game in 1997 than today.

I feel people's nostalgia for games leaves people jaded.

Going back and playing an old game that you have played before brings back the emotions and enjoyment of the first time you played it.
Going back and playing an old game that you have NEVER played before, and it becomes much more rare that you will enjoy it.

It wasn't until much later that I got around to playing Deus Ex. Many people regard it as an amazing game, however I still think it's just an 'ok' game.

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Original post by bakanoodle It wasn't until much later that I got around to playing Deus Ex. Many people regard it as an amazing game, however I still think it's just an 'ok' game.

Deus Ex is da shit, I didn't play it when it came out, in fact I got my copy from the bargain bin, but it isn't like I played it last year either, more like 2004 or so.

But I know what you mean, I find no appeal in System Shock myself, though I blame the odd controls rather than the story or the graphics.

I think the modern gamer population just needs some time to evolve.

There's a lot of new blood being drawn into the gamer crowds, so simple is good enough. However, as gamers get familiar with virtual worlds, I think they'll either quit gaming, or get tired of doing the same simple, shallow, repetitive, cheap, plastic things and want a little more depth.

When I was young (-20 years), casual gamers were playing monopoly and checkers, and some had never heard of a Nintendo or PC. Let alone played games like WoW or The Sims.

The casual market will always be there, but I think the serious gamer crowd is going to grow to rival it over time.

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Original post by Kwizatz UO nowadays has a niche market, the "people who won't/can't afford a video card that supports shaders" market, nowadays I guess even integrated Intel cards support some hardware acceleration, but some years ago, people just refused to let go of the UO 2D client, in the end, they removed the 3D client to go back to 2D.

not quite, while that's definitely it for some players, UO's niche market (which they mostly gutted with new expansions) was the player run world, something WOW and the like do not offer. (fully customizable user built housing, shops, etc...) and real pvp where death actually has a bit of meaning. (you can be looted by other players, or later with insurance you lost the insurance money for any insured items to the player who killed you). The 3d client was ditched because they never finished it, it looked TERRIBLE. Most items in game were customizable, down to using dye tubs for the coloring. The colors didn't show up in the third dawn client (the 3d one). Most animals came in different colors too, with some colors being rare, which also didn't work in the 3d client. Another issue was the 2d client has a few officially sanctioned plugins that greatly expand players ability to manage the game, and has a highly customizable UI, the 3d client did not.

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What does all this babbling have to do with the thread? Well, there is a dark story behind UO2 as well as a spin off MMO called UX:O, in the end and well into the development cycle of both EA decided or found out that there was a no audience, OU wasn't dying, and no one really wanted a new game, they wanted the same game but better, so that's why no one has built UO2.

There's plenty audience, UO2's death was due to EA not wanting to take the risk that players would migrate to UO2, cannibalizing UO and temporarily putting both games in a shaky situation. (it was safer to just keep existing UO subscriptions). The reason nobody else has even tried to do something similar...it makes more money these days to appeal to casual gamers, everyone's after the WoW crowd as there's more money in that

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Trademarks aside, it seems like there is no market for a better UO, or UO for that matter which is probably the reason no one has built a similar game with better graphics and dynamics, and I say there is no market for UO because the UO of today has been trying to be more like its competitors over the years, which seems to be what the player base wants, its one of the reasons I left it, its weird because the consensus seems to be that it was a much better game in 1997 than today.

That's actually due to EA working against themselves. UO for years and years was geared towards creative players, pvp'rs, and had quite a bit of actual role playing and group adventuring. After WoW was released, EA saw a huge new market... casual gamers, as stated above, and began to re-gear UO to try to pull them in, ignoring the needs of their current players. I'd say there's a good sized market for a proper UO followup, if it was done properly you'd probably get a good portion of UO's last remaining "long time" playerbase (10+ years players i think would jump at a new, properly done game) and a lot of the players who already migrated over to the free servers.

The statistics sites for divinity and demise seem to be down at the moment, but here's the stats for hybrid.
http://statistics.uogamers.com/

For something that's never marketed, and the fact that that's just one of a few dozen large "freeshards", i think that points to the fact that there is indeed a good sized playerbase for games like this, and that the current reasoning for overlooking it is merely the fact that the playerbase for a more casual MMO is even larger, there's more potential money to be made ignoring this playerbase than catering to it.

Is the OP ever coming back, or is everybody just talking to themselves here? It's been 3 days now...